Autobuild config files are Ruby scripts which configure rake to * imports the package from a SCM or (optionnaly) updates it * configures it. This phase can handle code generation, configuration (for instance for autotools-based packages), ... * build * install It takes the dependencies between packages into account in its build process, updates the needed environment variables (+PKG_CONFIG_PATH+, +PATH+, +LD_LIBRARY_PATH+, ...) == WARNING for 0.5 users Old configuration files used with autobuild 0.5 aren't accepted by Autobuild 0.6. Since 0.6, Autobuild uses Ruby for configuration (just like rake does)